Bizarre. Opaque. Kafkaesque. Bogus. You're kidding?!!...These are some of the reactions you'll have if you go to CoreStandards.org and read the Common Standards proposed for every public school in this country.
Savor this typical specimen of what the geniuses in the Education Establishment are prescribing, in this instance, for SECOND-graders:
"....Students use their understanding of addition to develop fluency with addition and subtraction within 100. They solve problems within 1000 by applying their understanding of models for addition and subtraction, and they develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to compute sums and differences of whole numbers in base-ten notation, using their understanding of place value and the properties of operations. They select and accurately apply methods that are appropriate for the context and the numbers involved to mentally calculate sums and differences for numbers with only tens or only hundreds..."
Note first of all, this is only 10% of the Standard. Note second that this material is said to be intended to help teachers, parents and citizens know what is going on in the local school. How could it? Few can understand such gibberish. Note that these Standards are central components of Obama's Race to the Top. Top? More likely, the Education Establishment, by drowning the country in verbiage, will kill off the last spark of interest in all things arithmetic.
By way of contrast, consider my shot at minimum standards (which I named American Basic Curriculum). I wanted to create something really simple so that parents could immediately know whether their children were on track. Here is my entire Standard for second-grade. "Math: count to 50; add and subtract 2-digit mumbers." Maybe it should be "Count to 100." Other than that, what else is there to say? Any seven-year-old kid who can add and substract two-digit numbers is doing just fine.
Consider just these words in the Core Standards: "use effcient, accurate and generalizable methods." What's that mean? Who's to say? "The properties of operations"--that's a perfect storm of nothing. How could all this vapor help parents (or teachers) know what their kids are doing?
More recently, I took another shot at imagining what radical simplicity would look like. I came up with the idea that you could teach ALL the mathematics appropriate for first grade with a handful of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars and dollar bills. I'm sure it's better to master basic, essential operations rather than to go careening all around from one verbosity to another. The best technique is to start with baby steps and thereby create confidence and momentum. (I wrote up this idea as "Price's Easy Arithmetic for First Graders" on hubpages)
The obvious point of both my projects was to explore what radical simplicity and transparency might look like.
Now that you've been fortified by two shots of common sense, you may be ready to put on your hazmat suit and see what the geniuses in our Education Establishment have in mind for FIRST-graders:
"Students develop strategies for adding and subtracting whole numbers based on their prior work with small numbers. They use a variety of models, including discrete objects and length-based models (e.g., cubes connected to form lengths), to model add-to, take-from, put-together, take-apart, and compare situations to develop meaning for the operations of addition and subtraction, and to develop strategies to solve arithmetic problems with these operations. Students understand connections between counting and addition and subtraction (e.g., adding two is the same as counting on two). They use properties of addition to add whole numbers and to create and use increasingly sophisticated strategies based on these properties (e.g., "making tens") to solve addition and subtraction problems within 20...."
This is just a small portion of what is essentially an unbearable screech. Real people actually trying to communicate with other real people never engage in this sort of verbal aggression. The fact that the Education Establishment concocts this stuff, and proudly puts it on a website, suggests they are not serious about doing a good job.
I started writing about education a few decades ago because I was offended by the language used by elite educators. One of my first essays was titled "English and Education"; it explores the Orwellian connection between bad language and bad thinking. I think we can safely conclude that the Education Establishment continues to be an example of that connection. These people brazenly parade their bad language.
Checking my American Basic Curriculum for fourth grade, I find: "Math: easy multiplication and division." That's it. Returning to CoreStandards.org for FOURTH grade, we find:
"Students generalize their understanding of place value to 1,000,000, understanding the relative sizes of numbers in each place. They apply their understanding of models for multiplication (equal-sized groups, arrays, area models), place value, and properties of operations, in particular the distributive property, as they develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods to compute products of multi-digit whole numbers. Depending on the numbers and the context, they select and accurately apply appropriate methods to estimate or mentally calculate products. They develop fluency with efficient procedures for multiplying whole numbers; understand and explain why the procedures work based on place value and properties of operations; and use them to solve problems. Students apply their understanding of models for division, place value, properties of operations, and the relationship of division to multiplication as they develop, discuss, and use efficient, accurate, and generalizable procedures to find quotients involving multi-digit dividends. They select and accurately apply appropriate methods to estimate and mentally calculate quotients, and interpret remainders based upon the context...."
The bureaucrats using this language pretend, on the one hand, to grapple with the subject but, on the other hand, to make sure that nothing is solved, the morass continues, and children are as innumerate as ever. Now, when you read in the paper about international tests showing that we rank around 25th, you'll know why. It's a wonder that we are so high.
My sense is that Common Core Standards are continuation of the bad ideas and bad faith that we saw in New Math and Reform Math. The 50- year trend is obvious. These so-called experts like to mix high school (or college) concepts with elementary school arithmetic. The sophistry was that little children would, years later, be much more sophisticated mathematicians. Instead, many become confused and alienated in their first years of school. When a child is learning to walk, there is rarely any gain in teaching alpine skiing and soccer. Common Core Standards seem to me to betray a malevolence in their language and in their methods.
(For more of this analysis, see "36: The Assault On Math" on
Improve-Education.org. The YouTube video gives a 4-minute version)
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